VanlyThe Checkatrade leads land in your inbox. Some turn into booked jobs. Most go cold inside an hour and you never hear back. The difference is almost never the quality of the lead. It is what happens in the first five minutes after the customer hit send. Here is the management system that the busiest quarter of trades run, written for a tradie who has tools in their hand.
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Why most Checkatrade leads die in the inbox, not on the job
Almost every "Checkatrade is broken" post you read online is really a "I am too busy to reply fast" post in disguise. The platform sends you live customer enquiries. If you reply in five minutes, you win a chunk of them. If you reply in an hour, you have already lost.
Harvard Business Review studied 2,241 companies and found that responding within an hour made you seven times more likely to qualify the lead than replying any later. For trades the real window is closer to five minutes, because the customer has messaged three of you at once and the first decent reply gets to the front of the queue.
We unpacked the numbers and a worked example in our piece on the real cost of slow lead replies for UK tradies. The headline: most tradies are not losing leads because Checkatrade sent rubbish. They are losing them because the second tradie on the list replied at 10:42 and they replied at 12:08.
Speed is not the whole story. But it is the gatekeeper. Nothing else in this post matters if the customer has already booked the bloke who answered before lunch.
Set the inbox up before the leads start coming
Most tradies wait until they have missed three jobs before they fix their setup. Do this once on a Sunday evening and you will never have to think about it again.
The bare bones checklist:
- Push notifications on for the Checkatrade Trade app, not just email. Email gets you a daily summary. Push gets you the lead while the customer is still on the page.
- WhatsApp Business installed with a saved greeting and at least one quick reply set up. The greeting is the holding line you will use when you cannot answer.
- A short doc on your phone with three saved response templates, ready to copy and paste. We will write those templates further down.
- A profile that earns its keep. One to three new photos uploaded a week with proper file names (kitchen splashback Helsby, not IMG_4382), area coverage set to where you actually want to work, and your insurance numbers in the about section.
- Reviews requested by SMS or WhatsApp link the same day every customer pays. Not a week later. Not when you remember. Day of payment, every time.
That last point is the hidden lever. Checkatrade visibility is driven by reviews more than anything else. A tradie sat on 47 reviews ranks above the same tradie sat on 14, even if the work is identical. If you add one review a week, you climb without paying more.
The five minute response template, steal this
You do not need ten templates. You need three. One for the urgent jobs, one for the multi week ones, one for the day visits.
Here is the shape. Edit it to your trade and your voice, but keep the structure.
Template 1, the urgent call out
Hi [name], thanks for the message through Checkatrade. I can usually get to a [boiler / leak / power] like this same day or next morning depending on where you are. Quick question, is it currently [leaking actively / no hot water / no power at all]? And what postcode are you in? Cheers, [your name]
Template 2, the multi week job
Hi [name], thanks for getting in touch through Checkatrade about the [bathroom / extension / rewire]. Happy to come and have a look. Two quick questions so I can come prepared. Is this for your own home or a rental? And when were you looking to get the work done, this month or further out? [Your name]
Template 3, the day visit
Hi [name], thanks for the Checkatrade message about the [tap / socket / hinge]. Sounds like a one visit job. Where in [your town] are you, and what does Thursday afternoon look like for you? [Your name]
Every template does three things. It thanks them, so it does not read like a robot. It ends in a question, so the customer has a reason to reply right now. And it does not give a price, because you cannot price the job from the bit of information they have given you.
Most tradies skip the question and write "let me know if you want me to take a look". That is a dead reply. The customer reads it and does nothing. A question turns the thread into conversation.
Qualify in two questions, not five
Once they have replied to your opener, you have one more shot to filter before the thread goes cold. Two questions are enough. Three is one too many.
The two that earn their keep:
-
Is this for your own home, a rental, or something else? Separates owner occupiers from landlords from letting agents. Tells you whether you are quoting one person or chasing a property manager who will ghost you in two weeks.
-
When were you looking to get this done? Surfaces the tyre kickers. Anyone who answers "no rush, just getting prices" is six months away from booking. Anyone who says "this week if possible" is a real job.
The rule: you do not quote before you have an answer to both. A quote sent into the void costs you an hour and tells you nothing. A quote sent to someone who needs the job done next week and owns the house is a quote that gets accepted.
Two messages, two questions, then you decide. Quote it, book a survey, or politely move on. Either way you have spent ten minutes, not three hours.
Follow up the leads you do not win on day one
Most tradies send the quote, hear nothing, and write the lead off after a week. The booked jobs are sat in those write offs. They just did not respond to the first quote because life happened.
We laid out the full sequence in the quote follow up playbook for tradesmen. The compressed version, applied to Checkatrade leads specifically:
| Day | Message shape | What you are doing |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Quote sent, "let me know if anything is unclear" | Standard delivery |
| 3 | "Quick check, did the quote land ok? Happy to walk through it" | Removing the embarrassment of admitting they did not read it |
| 10 | "Diary is filling up for [month]. Want me to hold a slot?" | Polite urgency, no price drop |
| 21 | "Closing the file on this one unless you want me to keep it open" | The graceful exit that often books the job |
That last message is the one most tradies will not send. It books more work than the other three combined, because most customers had simply forgotten and felt awkward replying late. The "closing the file" line gives them a way back in.
Run that sequence on every Checkatrade lead that does not book inside 48 hours. You will recover one or two jobs a month that you used to write off. At £400 average ticket that is £4,800 a year, for sending three follow up messages.
When you cannot reply in five minutes, because you are on the tools
Here is the real problem. You are not lazy. You are not slow. You are on a roof. You are in a loft. You are under a sink. Your phone is in the van and even when it pings, you cannot stop what you are doing to type a reply.
Two ways out of this.
The free version: set a WhatsApp Business auto reply that fires when you are out of hours, plus a Checkatrade saved reply that says "thanks for the message, on a job until [time], will come back to you the second I am off the tools". It buys you maybe an extra 30 minutes of slack. For a solo tradie doing 15 enquiries a month that is often enough.
The paid version: an AI receptionist that actually reads the enquiry, replies in your voice, asks the two qualifying questions, and books the call back into your diary. That is what an AI receptionist for tradesmen is meant to do, and it is the answer once you are taking 20 or more enquiries a month across Checkatrade, Bark, MyBuilder, Google Business Profile, and WhatsApp.
This is the gap Vanly was built for. The AI office manager sits across every channel, reads each enquiry the moment it lands, replies in your voice, asks the two qualifying questions, and pings you on WhatsApp with the answer. You climb out of the loft, see "Mrs Khan, kitchen tap, Tuesday afternoon, owner occupier", and you reply yes or no. No typing, no triage, no missed lead.
Whether you go free or paid, the principle is the same. Customers do not expect you to be sat at a desk. They expect you to acknowledge them. A holding reply at 10:31 beats a perfect reply at 12:08, every time. The customer who got a holding line is still in the conversation. The one who waited 90 minutes is talking to the next tradie down the list.
We also covered why most customers now prefer text to phone calls in this piece on why customers want to text not call. Tradies who insist on calling back are filtering themselves out of younger customer brackets without realising it.
Track what you spend vs what you book
The last piece of the system is the bit no tradie wants to do. Check the math once a month.
Pick a date, last day of every month works, and spend 15 minutes with a notebook or the notes app on your phone.
Write down:
- Total spent on Checkatrade that month, including the membership and any per lead fees
- Number of enquiries received
- Number of those that became quotes
- Number of quotes that became booked jobs
- Total revenue from those booked jobs
Now you have four numbers that matter. Cost per lead. Quote rate. Quote to book rate. Return on spend.
For most UK tradies the cost per booked job from Checkatrade lands somewhere between £25 and £80 depending on the category. If yours is over £120 you are either replying too slow, quoting too high, or in a category that does not fit Checkatrade. Two of those three are fixable inside a week.
If you keep this monthly the patterns show up. Bathroom enquiries convert at 30 percent. Boiler enquiries at 10 percent. You can decide whether the 10 percent bracket is worth keeping or whether you turn the category off and let Checkatrade send you the work you actually want.
Frequently asked questions
How many Checkatrade leads should I expect a month?
Hugely variable by trade, area and review count. Solo plumbers in a medium town with 30+ reviews typically see 15 to 40 enquiries a month. Electricians slightly higher. Builders and kitchen fitters fewer in number but higher in value. If you are seeing under 10 you almost certainly have a profile or coverage area issue, not a Checkatrade issue.
What is a normal conversion rate?
Industry rough average for "enquiry to booked job" sits between 8 and 20 percent. If you are converting at 5 percent or below you are either too slow, too expensive, or quoting jobs outside your sweet spot. If you are above 25 percent you are leaving money on the table, your prices are too low.
Should I reply to a Checkatrade lead by message or phone call?
Message first, every time. About two thirds of customers under 45 will not answer an unknown number any more. They will read a message and reply in three minutes. Once you have a name and a postcode by message, then offer a call to nail down the detail. We covered the data behind this in why customers want to text not call.
How do I get more Checkatrade reviews?
Ask every paying customer on the day they pay, by sending the Checkatrade review link by SMS or WhatsApp. One sentence, "really appreciate it if you could leave a quick Checkatrade review, link here". You will get a yes from about 40 percent of customers. Asking a week later, you get under 10 percent. Same ask, different timing, four times the result.
What if a customer messages me back at 11pm?
You do not have to reply at 11pm. You do have to reply by 7am the next morning, because by 9am they will have messaged someone else. Set the alarm 20 minutes earlier on the morning after a busy day and clear the overnight messages first.
Is Checkatrade worth it in 2026?
For most UK tradies, yes, if you reply fast and convert above 10 percent. The membership is cheaper than two missed jobs a year. The competitor blogs telling you to ditch it are mostly trying to sell you their lead gen alternative. The honest answer is that Checkatrade is one of the best UK lead channels for tradies who treat it like a channel and not like a vending machine. Manage the leads properly and it pays. Ignore them for two hours and it does not.
The short version
Checkatrade is a fine lead channel. The problem is never the platform. The problem is the gap between the customer hitting send and you reading the message. Close that gap and the rest is gravy.
A working system looks like this. Push notifications on. Three response templates saved on your phone. Two qualifying questions before any quote. A four message follow up sequence. A 15 minute monthly review of what you spent and what you booked. And a holding reply, free or paid, that catches the leads landing while you are on the tools.
Do that and Checkatrade earns its keep. Skip it and the leads will keep dying in your inbox while you wonder why the platform is sending you rubbish.
If you want the same thing across Checkatrade, Bark, MyBuilder, Google, Facebook and WhatsApp without doing the typing yourself, try Vanly free for 14 days. No card needed to start.